By the time Nixon left office, I had most of the hippie merit badges (playing the recorder, macrame, hitchhike cross country, etc.) including the one for reading (although not the one for owning) The Anarchist's Cookbook. Even as a youth, however, I recoiled at the contents.

This. A sheltered boy from a strict Baptist, right wing, white trash southern family chose this as one of his first novels to read and find what the real world was all about. 1984 started me down the path of questioning everything.Obviously the book is a fictional "what if", but it awakened me enough to see what foul beasts humans can be.And after finishing 1984 I began to read the newspaper ravenously.

nfidelbastard wrote:

This. A sheltered boy from a strict Baptist, right wing, white trash southern family chose this as one of his first novels to read and find what the real world was all about.

Class, religion and politics have fuckall to do with the books kids are exposed to. Both my parents had ivy league degrees and considered themselves upper crust. My stay at home mom, a Boston Debutante, would become a school librarian but neither parent discussed books or read to their kids. I was a parental unit myself before I read...

choad wrote:

nfidelbastard wrote:

This. A sheltered boy from a strict Baptist, right wing, white trash southern family chose this as one of his first novels to read and find what the real world was all about.

Class, religion and politics have fuckall to do with the books kids are exposed to. Both my parents had ivy league degrees and considered themselves upper crust. My stay at home mom, a Boston Debutante, would become a school librarian but neither parent discussed books or read to their kids. I was a parental unit myself before I read...

I wasn't so much bemoaning the absence of literature in my home or the lack of encouragement to read mind expanding and mind altering books, although those things were true. In fact the only book we were encouraged to read was, not surprisingly, the Bible. And only the right parts. Instead, I was whining about the limited world view I was allowed see. There were no outlets where a kid could get differing viewpoints because everyone, at least publicly, thought the same. Church was no good. One Sunday, the deacon who stood at the doorway to shake everyone's hand as they exited the church commented to my dad on the MLK assassination- "I don't believe anyone deserves to die. But if anyone did, it was him." There was no respite in school from the relentless right wing propaganda, especially since desegregation was possibly on the horizon. That probably caused all the adults to hunker down in the conservative corner with a deathgrip on the ropes.

I think television news was the first thing that broke through my chitinous shell of church, Merle Haggard, conservatism and family. (I still like Merle though) I couldn't see why America at that time should be killing Asians in Vietnam, no matter how many times my dad explained the domino theory to me. Plus, there was the dawning awareness that in just a few years I might be chosen to feed that meat grinder. I think this, along with all the cultural upheavals that I could view on the TV news got me off my ass and into trying to seriously figure out the world. Thus I read 1984. And many of the other books in this thread. This story doesn't have a happy middle though. Ignorance is indeed bliss. In my new awareness of the world I became angry and chased bliss away then discovered all the drugs. I got better though. And when I had kids, I introduced them early on to the world in general and to subversive ideas in particular. And to good books.

Read this one about the time I got my draft number in the lottery (51), and decided I'd go to Canada before I went to Vietnam. Luckily for me, the war ended, and I never had to see what I really would have done.